Help! My youngest is 3 and has always been a good sleeper but is a big cryer and very hard work generally. Lately, this has extended to the bedtimes that used to be so good. She will go to bed fine, have a story, sing a song and say goodnight. Then she'll come out of her room 2 or 3 times, still in a good mood, and then when we lead her back to bed, she starts to kick off. Before long she's screaming.
This is where I'm stuck though. It's almost like she HAS to cry herself to sleep. She'll cry for 10-15 mins and then go off. But every time we go in to her, it's like we reset this timer. She won't be comforted and nothing stops the crying. We've tried silently putting her back in bed, telling her off, comforting and cuddling, giving in to her demands, putting her on the naughty spot, I swear we've tried it all. Neither approach works better than another, they all don't work. She will resort back to crying for the 10-15 mins until she falls asleep start again. We put her in bed at 7 and she isn't asleep before 8.30 lately. It's so silly.
My husband says just to leave her. He says if we ignore her from the start and let her cry to sleep she'd be asleep before 7.30 and be better for the extra sleep. But the mum in me just can't let my baby girl just cry broken hearted until she falls asleep thinking I don't care, it breaks me. But I do see his point that this is probably a phase and I'm just prolonging her crying by going in to her so often. What would you do?